Please help me plan my exams!

Hi,

To begin with, I will ask you not to lose hope on ATX but it is wise to prepare yourself for any worst case scenario.

— Then, in my opinion I will surely ask you to start studying for the next paper now since you do have 3 months in your hand before the June sitting( March, April and May) and don’t waste this time.
Think this way, what if you do pass in ATX? Then you have wasted some valuable time in which you could have prepared for another paper.

I will advise you to take up a paper start studying it with the intention to sit in June sitting so that you don’t slack and remain focused. However, if you are not confident with your preparation and think will not be able to pass with that type of preparation then you can delay it to September but no longer than that.

In the worst case scenario if you don’t pass in ATX then see you scores and the margin you have lost that 50%. If it’s less the scores are less than 45% than you need to work on your concepts and also practise a lot. But if they are more than 45% than its purely about practising.

Then it all comes down to self assessment of your preparation. As I have mentioned above, if you are confident that your preparation will help you secure a good pass then give it in June otherwise delay it to September.
The whole idea is to make sure the next attempt is the last attempt. There is no use of attempting an exam for which you are not fully prepared.

From what you have mentioned, I assume you are working full time. If that is so, it surely gets difficult tackling a situation and it is best to give the paper you are absolutely confident about in the first sitting and deffer the other in the next sitting. But this is in the worst case scenario. Will advise you to forget ATX until the result and leave the worries for the night of the result day.

— Then coming to choice of paper.
I would personally prefer this order
SBR -1st
AAA – 2nd
SBL – 3rd
I don’t recommend giving AAA before SBR because the knowledge gained by accounting standards in SBR is essential for AAA. Once you have studied and done SBR it will surely be a great boost for AAA preparation.
SBL is for the end because it is involves a case study and the knowledge gained in all other papers will surely be a tremendous help in that.
On the contrary, the above is just my opinion, not an cast-iron rule and the decision is for the student to make in what order they would like to give these.

—Now coming to study medium…how to prepare?
Since you have mentioned that it is too late to join classes and they don’t run classes for September so you are left with the self study option. Otherwise waiting until the December sitting classes will not be reasonable.

In any case, will surely recommend you to start studying be yourself. OpenTuition has lecture videos and notes that cover everything needed to secure a pass and the best thing is that you are getting all this for free! You can conveniently study at your own pace.
Then if you think you require a study manual you can buy that if you wish but you will have to…and let me repeat that…You WILL HAVE to get a practice/exam kit from an ACCA APPROVED CONTENT PROVIDER. Practise is must and make sure you practise questions as much as you can!! Can’t stress this enough!
Also you can use the 20% discount code for buying the BPP materials.

—Finally about the tuition providers. ACCA has an Approved Tuition Providers Directory so for that check out the links below

https://www.accaglobal.com/ca/en/student/your-study-options/learning-providers/how-to-choose-a-learning-provider/search-for-a-tuition-provider.html

https://portal.accaglobal.com/tpweb/faces/page/public/tuitionprovider/searchtp/XXTPQuickSearchVO1Table.jspx

All the best!

Hope that helps.